What can be served plain or in soup, with pasta or in a sandwich, covered with sauce or with dip on the side, packed with vegetables or even leftovers… shall we go on? We can. Because meatballs? They’re magic for a family cook. We know that making them can end up a production, but we have all the tips to ensure that it doesn't. Follow them, and meatballs will become a weeknight go-to. You'll even have leftovers.

Intentional leftovers, dubbed nextovers by our guest David Tamarkin, digital director of Epicurious and author of the Cook90 cookbook, are extras that you make intentionally while cooking one dinner, with the express intention of turning them into a different dinner on another night. Cooking the 1st night takes the usual amount of time, but cooking on the nextover night takes a fraction of the time. How’s that for a busy parent game changer? In this episode, we talk about everything from how to stock your pantry to choosing the right recipes to become a nextover master.

Everyone’s talking about Marie Kondo and her KonMari method, but in this episode, Stacie and Meghan ask if joy, alone, is the best guiding principle for busy home cooks looking to organize and pare down their kitchens. We think more needs to be considered.

Listen: We know you love your slow cooker, and we use ours frequently too. But we’re not sold on the idea that the slow cooker is the answer to every parent’s dinner woes. In fact, we’ve got some major issues with crock pot cooking and a bunch of slow cooker recipes too.

But here are some dishes, ingredients, and circumstances for which the slow cooker is perfect. And once we’re done telling you all the ways you can do better than your slow cooker, we also tell you how you can maximize it. Because, damn, if you’re going to wait six or more hours for your food, it’d better be good.

Chicken nuggets have become a vilified symbol of “kid’s food” in America, yet nearly every cuisine has a version of this simple dish, from Italian Chicken Milanese to Japanese Chicken Katsu, and these dishes are not considered just kids’ food in other countries.

This week, Stacie and Meghan are reclaiming chicken nuggets… or strips, or fingers, or cutlets. We go over everything from the merits of keeping frozen nuggets on hand to pro-tips on how to make yours homemade as quickly and inexpensively as possible. Because we’re taking back this “kids food” to restore peace and equilibrium at the family table. And because, yea, we want to eat some crispy breaded chicken too.

Classroom celebrations have nothing on us: We share ALL the ideas for how to make the easiest classroom treats for any holiday celebration. From clever kitchen shortcuts to store-bought hacks, we'll help you score points with the kids (and their classmates!) and still keep your sanity. Or with Valentine's Day coming up, still have time for some kid-free hanky panky — or you know, alone time on the toilet (which is not to be underrated).

This week is all about nachos — but not for the reason you might expect. Because would we ever dedicate a whole episode to game day food just because of the World Series? (We kid. We know it’s a super white Maroon 5 concert.)

No, we’re talking nachos because they are one of the most underrated family meals around. We’ll tell you why, fill you in on all the gloriously easy ways you can use nachos to make a fast meal packed with good stuff your kids will actually eat & give tips on how to build them perfectly. Because soggy, structurally unsound nachos suck for everyone.

Ever heard of the “health halo”? This week, we break down the idea that a food is healthy just because a single claim of healthfulness can be made about it. Are those cookies healthy because they’re made with organic sweet potato? Maybe — but also maybe not. It depends on a lot more than just the sweet potato.

Dietician Katie Morford of Mom’s Kitchen Handbook weighs in on issues like how to quickly read food labels & whether hiding veggies is worth it as we try to figure out which foods live up to the labels they’re given. Not to determine if they’re “good” or “bad,” but to figure out their rightful place in our families’ diet — and in our grocery budgets too!

Over the last few months, both Stacie and Meghan have taken a long, hard look at their families’ finances and were shocked to discover how much they were spending on groceries. As it turns out, they’re not alone. After talking to Kumiko, aka The Budget Mom, they learned that food is the biggest expenditure for most families.

Whether or not you thought you were looking to save money on groceries this year, this episode is for you — because who doesn’t want to save money?! Sure, we go deep with hardcore tips for people who are ready to get serious about their budgets. But we also talk about practical ways that anyone can save money by being more mindful and less wasteful: a worthwhile practice in more ways than one.

Welcome to season 2, dedicated to solving kitchen problems & building practical cooking skills to help feed your family more easily, quickly, and affordably!

When thinking about how to save time, energy, and money in the kitchen, there was no question of how to kick things off: with the Instant Pot! And if doing a primer on the IP for busy parents, there was no question of who to talk to: Michelle Tam of Nom Nom Paleo. Here's everything you need to know about an electric pressure cooker, and how to use it most effectively to feed a family.

There’s no escaping the holiday onslaught now! So this week, we do our part to keep it all from feeling overwhelming by helping you take charge of how you want the next month to look.

We pull out our kitchen expertise to share tons of suggestions for easy homemade food gifts that will save you time and money, and also our fastest, simplest family meals that you can whip up when you’re super exhausted thanks to all of the extra stuff you have to take care of this month. Basically: We share ideas and shortcuts that will help you take care of yourself so that you can holiday like a boss.

Over the years, we’ve increasingly become kitchen minimalists. We encourage home cooks to spend less, invest in fewer gadgets, buy smart, and maximize what you already have. But we have one weakness: COOKBOOKS! No matter how many cookbooks we buy, are gifted, or get through work, our cookbook wish list never gets any shorter.

This week, to help us sort through the best cookbooks of the year, we invited Brian Stewart of Salt + Spine, a podcast that explores the art and craft of cookbooks. Tune in for his picks in unconventional categories thought up just for us: the home cooks who have to feed families night after night. After night.